Iraqi Security forces cast early ballots in provincial elections

          
Iraqi police officers and soldiers cast their votes in provincial elections on Saturday, ahead of the main ballot in a week's time.           

Members of the security forces lined up outside polling stations across the country, including centres in Baghdad and Basra.            

"This election is very important to the Iraqi people, to make the Iraqi government successful in general and to expand projects and services for the Iraqi people," said police officer Mohsen Matter as he cast his ballot at a voting centre in Baghdad.             

More than 14 (m) million voters are expected to head to the ballot box next Saturday, to choose provincial council members from more than eight-thousand candidates.

Polling is scheduled to take place in 12 of Iraq's 18 provinces.          

It is set to be a test for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's political bloc and for the security forces under his command that are charged with keeping voters safe.           

Elections for national positions such as prime minister and members of parliament are scheduled to take place next year.            

"Usually the provincial council elections seem to be a test, a test for all political blocs and parties of how much support they have among the Iraqi people, in all provinces," said Ossama Saeed, Professor of Political Science at Baghdad University.            

A pair of deadly bombs outside a Sunni mosque on Friday stoked fears of violence ahead of the main vote.           

The blasts happened in the town of Kanaan, about 75 kilometres (47 miles) northeast of the capital.          

Violence in Iraq has fallen sharply from its peak in 2006 and 2007, but deadly attacks remain common a decade after the US-led invasion.        

Al-Qaida's Iraqi branch, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, frequently carries out coordinated bombings targeting civilian targets such as mosques, markets and restaurants.

It primarily targets Shiites, whom it considers heretics, as well as security forces and other officials tied to Iraq's Shiite-led government.            

But it has in the past also struck Sunni targets in an attempt to re-ignite the sectarian fighting that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in the years following the fall of Baghdad, a decade ago.             

Iraqi officials believe al-Qaida is growing stronger in Iraq, fuelled in part by rising lawlessness on the Syria-Iraq frontier and what they say is cross-border cooperation with the Syrian militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front.


AP